Learning Curve: Complete

callioope:

The last chapter of my in-canon-universe college AU, Learning Curve, has now been posted! @watson-emma​, thank you for your patience, and I’m sorry this took so long! I hope you enjoy it!

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Chapter Synopsis: In which Krennic threatens to ruin everything, as he is wont to do, and Jyn worries about the future.

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Excerpt:

“I have twenty minutes. Tell me what you did, and I’ll tell you how to fix it.”

Cassian looks up from the food he’s spent the last five minutes pushing around his tray.

The straight-to-business, run-people-over look on Leia’s face would quell most of their peers in SGA, but Cassian prefers to think himself immune to her tactics.

“Welcome back,” he says. “Did you enjoy your long weekend?”

“Not remotely, thanks for asking,” Leia says sharply. “Your girlfriend neglected to do so this morning, a fact I found quite puzzling considering your mutual delight in my romantic humiliations.”

He ought to chastise her for calling Han a humiliation (a rather cruel hyperbole), but instead his curiosity overtakes his self-control. “You saw Jyn this morning?”

Smirking, Leia leans back in her chair, like a tooka-cat who’s caught her prey. “We had breakfast with her mother. I was surprised you weren’t there.”

It takes all his restraint not to blurt out How was she? But this time he manages to cover. “Different schedules today.”

“Right,” Leia says, eyebrows raised skeptically. “Which is why she’s not here now, I assume.”

He nods and goes back to looking at the food on his tray.

“It doesn’t explain her behavior at breakfast—” Cassian’s fork slips on the tray and makes an awful screeching sound. “—or yours now.”

He finally takes a bite of the cafeteria’s mystery meat, just so he can have something to chew and a reason not to talk. It’s amateur, but he’s—well, he’s tired and strung-out, and it’s the only way to prevent himself from asking Leia just what exactly she means by “it doesn’t explain her behavior at breakfast.” 

(Don’t be stupid, says some inner voice that sounds suspiciously like Kay, if you want to know how Jyn is doing—if you want to make sure she’s okay—go find her and ask her yourself.

But first, evade Leia.)

“Don’t waste our time on the oblivious act,” Leia says. “Like I said—twenty minutes. What happened?”

“Leia…”

“I did not get dragged through an asteroid field with Han Solo just for you to blow things with Jyn.”

Dragged through an asteroid field? He thinks of the piece of junk Han Solo landed in four days ago. Considering that Leia did make it back just fine, there must be an amusing story there—and perhaps a chance to distract Leia from her prodding. 

“Couldn’t have been that bad, with the greatest pilot in the galaxy at the controls,” he quips. Leia opens her mouth to protest the obvious deflection, so he adds, “Bodhi seemed under the impression it went well.”

“‘Well’?” Leia says incredulously. “I don’t know what your friend’s idea of a good date is, but I would hardly consider fleeing criminals with a broken hyperdrive, hiding in the belly of a giant space slug, and party-crashing my father’s business dinner with the mayor of Bespin as going well.”

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